The Yellow Sea (Hwanghae) (AKA The Murderer) (2010) (Blu-ray)

The next film by The Chaser's director builds on many of the themes in that film. Here we have a twisted world in which probably no-one would choose to inhabit, where cops are useless or incompetant, bad guys are demonically strong, and protagonists dirtied by it all - in The Chaser for example we followed a cop turned pimp, but we also learn that he was hardly a model officer when he was on the force..Yet at the same time in the Chaser there were many moments of humanity. In the Yellow Sea I struggled to find this humanity within most of the characters themselves. Partially difficulty in finding reasons to empathise with the characters comes from some of the detracting features in the film. Reviews abound on the internet, and you might seek out and find comments there such as 'women not portrayed in enough detail', 'overly long', 'lacks editing'.But at the same time there are many reasons to watch this film. Let me give you a few:- As social comment, albiet from the director's angle, this film differs from many of the more popular Korean films of recent years, examples here would be Oldboy, Bittersweet life, in particular The man from nowhere. Instead there is possibly a lack of character development, in the traditional sense, in favour of seeing the poverty and hardship of the lives in the first third of the film. This focus on Urban life/poverty/hardship demonstrates why the characters do as they do (to some extent).- The cinematography here is very good, much as in The chaser there is attention to detail, artistry with the lens. Not as polished looking as The chaser I would say the investment of more money, possibly time, and locations for filming opened up the use of different camera styles. Some may find this jarring - esp near the last third of the film - but I think it does add to the direction of the scenes. There is a lot of action which I think is best seen not described.- The acting as ever is good, despite my earlier point about a lack of character development in the traditional sense. The main character speaks little and we must therefore look to his experiences, facial expressions and suchlike. In terms of the other characters the villians work well, if again we learn little about them as people, but they seem clearly 'products' of their environments - note the 'clean' looking vs 'dirty' looking Boss theme!- The plot. Though there seems to be some confusion in interpretations, the film warrants a re-watch to understand the goings on after about an hour and a bit in. There are a number of twists and plot changes, notably the shift between the first third and middle/last portions of the film.Overall I would recommend the film, if it must be compared to exisiting Korean film then something like Sympathy for MR Vengence would be applicable, perhaps too Memories of murder. I would stress though that this is one of the bleaker films out there in Korean cinema, we are encouraged perhaps to learn (again in a limited way) about the plight of Koreans outside of the pop/glamour-world. Even more starkly less of the popular Black humour appears in this film than is ususally present in Korean thrillers; though it is there in small doses I think you might check your moral compass if you come away from this film smiling!#Buyers may be interested to know this features 2 discs, with a long making of feature. The film is a 'directors cut' in which about 15/20 mins is removed in comparison to the Korean release. There is a comparison on the net, but I would add that the film is long enough as it is.

Korean thriller The Yellow Sea didn't make as much impact in the west as director Na Hong-jin's previous thriller The Chaser [DVD] did, but it's a much more satisfying film. Where that had the benefit of a premise with a certain amount of ingenuity, this offers a much more generic plot that we've seen a thousand times before - a down on his luck loser is persuaded to carry out a crime only to find himself pursued by cops and crooks alike - but gives it a degree of verisimilitude that helps sell many of the plot contrivances and unlikely escapes. Taxi driver Ha Jung-woo is struggling with a debt he can never repay after buying a fake visa to South Korea for his wife, who has left him and their child in the lurch in the impoverished bored area between Korea, China and Russia without a word. Offered the chance to pay it off by carrying out a contract killing in Korea, he reluctantly accepts, taking the opportunity to try to track her down while he's there. Naturally things go very wrong (though not necessarily in the way you might expect) and get particularly messy and he finds himself outrunning small armies of overenthusiastic cops or hatchet-wielding crooks who want to get rid of him...Although there's a lot less action than the trailers might lead you to believe (much of the first hour of the 140-minute running time of the director's cut is effectively naturalistic buildup), it's impressively handled when it comes. Our tarnished hero's ability to escape against overwhelming odds stretches credibility a bit on paper, but the execution on screen is convincingly chaotic enough to sell them even if there seem to be an inordinate number of crashing vehicles at times. Similarly Kim Yun-seok's almost indestructible villain seems to have almost superhuman powers of endurance but somehow the film gets away with it by creating a believable world around its characters. It doesn't add up to much or offer much that's new, but it's still an effective if bloody bit of Korean noir.For the most part Eureka's Region B Blu-ray release is an impressive 2.35:1 transfer, though there are a few bits of noticeable edge enhancement and the limitations of the digital photography are very apparent in parts of the big car chase. Extras are a decent 77-minute eight-part collection of behind the scenes featurettes and three trailers.